145+ Leadership Quotes To Help Increase Inspire

Leadership is a multifaceted concept that encompasses various qualities, skills, and responsibilities. At its core, leadership means the ability to guide, influence, and inspire others to achieve a common goal or a shared vision. Here are some key aspects of what leadership means:

Vision: Leaders have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, both for themselves and their team or organization. They can articulate this vision and motivate others to work towards it.

Communication: Effective communication is a crucial aspect of leadership. Leaders must be able to convey their ideas, expectations, and instructions clearly to their team members.

Inspiration: A good leader inspires others by setting an example through their actions, behavior, and work ethic. They motivate and encourage their team members to reach their full potential.

Decision-making: Leaders must make well-informed and timely decisions. They analyze situations, consider the available information, and choose the best course of action.

Empowerment: True leaders empower their team members by delegating responsibilities and trusting them to carry out their tasks effectively. They provide support and resources to help their team succeed.

Adaptability: Leadership means being adaptable and flexible in the face of challenges and changes. A good leader can navigate through uncertainty and lead their team through difficult times.

Integrity: Leaders must act with integrity and be honest, ethical, and trustworthy. This helps build trust among team members and stakeholders.

Accountability: Leaders take responsibility for their actions and the outcomes of their decisions. They hold themselves and their team accountable for achieving their goals.

Emotional intelligence: Understanding and managing emotions, both their own and those of others, is crucial for effective leadership. Leaders empathize with their team members and create a positive and supportive work environment.

Continuous learning: Great leaders are always open to learning and improving. They seek feedback, embrace new ideas, and stay updated on industry trends.

Team building: Leadership involves bringing together a diverse group of individuals and creating a cohesive, motivated team that collaborates harmoniously towards a common objective.

Problem-solving: Leaders are resourceful problem-solvers. They tackle challenges head-on and encourage their team to find creative solutions to obstacles.

Leadership can take many forms and is not limited to a particular position or title. It can be seen in all aspects of life, from business and politics to community organizations and even within families. Ultimately, leadership is about inspiring and guiding others to achieve greatness collectively.

Leadership Quotes

1. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

2. “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.”
— Ken Kesey

3. “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”
— Walt Disney

4. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
— Henry David Thoreau

5. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
— Thomas Edison

6. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
— Dr. Seuss

7. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
— Henry Adams

8. “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.”
— Michelangelo

9. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
— John F. Kennedy

10. “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.”
— John Hume

11. “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
— Margaret Thatcher

12. “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”
— Ronald Reagan

13. “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.”
— Thomas Jefferson

14. “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment and it comes with plenty of failure along the way.”
— Barack Obama

15. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
— Confucius

16. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
— Plato

17. “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
— Thomas Paine

18. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
— Abraham Lincoln

19. “In order to remain relevant, you must establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.”
— Marc Benioff

20. “Leadership should be focused on extending the ladder of opportunity for everyone.”
— Justin Trudeau

21. “A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.”
— Jack Ma

22. “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”
— Dalai Lama

23. “Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.”
— Bill Clinton

24. “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
— Mother Teresa

25. “It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.”
— Queen Elizabeth II

26. “Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion.”
— Oprah Winfrey

27. “Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.”
— Melinda Gates

28. “Find the smartest people you can and surround yourself with them.”
— Marissa Meyer

29. “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.”
— Brad Szollose

30. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.”
— John C. Maxwell

31. “Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.”
— Diogenes

32. “Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility.”
— Stanley McChrystal

33. “Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.”
— Max De Pree

34. “Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.”
— Orrin Woodward

35. “Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy.”
— Paul Polman

36. “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
— Ralph Nader

37. “Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.”
— John Gardner

38. “More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.”
— Warren Bennis

39. “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.”
— Dianne Feinstein

40. “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”
— Alexander the Great

41. “Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.”
— Mary D. Poole

42. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

43. “Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.”
— Patrick Ness

44. “Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise.”
— Peter F. Drucker

45. “A leader operating in enemy territory should always project positivity and optimism.”
— Naval Ravikant

46. “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”
— Warren Bennis

47. “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
— Amelia Earhart

48. “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”
— Adlai Stevenson

49. “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.”
— J.P. Morgan

50. “Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.”
— George Patton

51. “In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.”
— Tina Fey

52. “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”
— Thomas Sowell

53. “Leaders don’t force people to follow – they invite them on a journey.”
— Charles S. Lauer

54. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
— Martin Luther King Jr

55. “We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.”
— Whoopi Goldberg

56. “The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.”
— Henry Kissinger

57. “Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.”
— Warren Bennis

58. “Leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory.”
— Jocko Willink

59. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

60. “It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him. Believe you can surpass. Believe you can go beyond. Those who harbor the second-best attitude are invariably second-best doers.”
— David J. Schwartz

61. “You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.”
— Travis Bradberry

62. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.”
— Colin Powell

63. “Make people feel like the hero of their journey and they will do more.”
— Maxime Lagacé

64. “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”
— Toni Morrison

65. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.”
— Publilius Syrus

66. “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.”
— Nelson Mandela

67. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”
— Coco Chanel

68. “Earn your leadership every day.”
— Michael Jordan

69. “Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.”
— John Naisbitt

70. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
— Margaret Fuller

71. “Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results.”
— Robin Sharma

72. “Leadership distilled down to 3 words: Make a difference.”
— Robin Sharma

73. “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
— Winston Churchill

74. “To lead people, walk behind them.”
— Lao Tzu

75. “All leaders are readers.”
— Jim Rohn

76. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

77. “Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream.”
— Peter McWilliams

78. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
— Leo Tolstoy

79. “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
— Nelson Mandela

80. “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”
— Buddha

81. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
— Steve Jobs

82. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that won’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison

83. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

84. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou

85. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller

86. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
— Barack Obama

87. “The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.”
— Faye Wattleton

88. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

89. “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.”
— Isaac Newton

90. “A leader is a dealer in hope.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

91. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”
— Bill Bradley

92. “Leadership is like third grade: it means repeating the significant things.”
— Max De Pree

93. “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
— Sheryl Sandberg

94. “Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”
— Peter F. Drucker

95. “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.”
— Seth Godin

96. “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” — Warren Bennis

97. “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.”
— Rosalynn Carter

98. “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”
— Dolly Parton

99. “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.”
— Tina Fey

100. “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”
— Brandon Sanderson

101. “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
— Peter F. Drucker

102. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
— William Arthur Ward

103. “The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.”
— Seth Godin

104. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”
— Max Lucado

105. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
— Warren Bennis

106. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
— Bill Gates

107. “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”
— Sheryl Sandberg

108. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.”
— John C. Maxwell

109. “A good leader must hate the wrong thing more than they hate the pain of doing the right thing.”
— Angela Jiang

110. “Do what is right, not what is easy.”
— Unknown

111. “Set and maintain high standards. If you have to be hard on people, do it with love and a genuine wish for them to improve. Praise people when they hit the standard.
— Sam Altman

112. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
— Steve Jobs

113. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”
— John C. Maxwell

114. “No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders. So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself, to use yourself completely – all your skills, gifts and energies – in order to make your vision manifest. You must withhold nothing. You must, in sum, become the person you started out to be, and to enjoy the process of becoming.”
— Warren Bennis

115. “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
— George Patton

116. “You manage things; you lead people.”
— Grace Hopper

117. “A boss has the title, a leader has the people.”
— Simon Sinek

118. “The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”
— Sheryl Sandberg

119. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.”
— Mother Teresa

120. “Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.”
— Nelson Mandela

121. “Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.”
— Winston Churchill

122. “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.”
— Tony Blair

123. “If you do every job like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life, that’s when you get noticed.”
— Mary Barra

124. “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
— Albert Einstein

125. “Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.”
— Lyndon B Johnson

126. “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
— John F. Kennedy

127. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett

128. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
— Henry Ford

129. “Great masters neither want nor need your worship. Your greatest gift to them and yourself is to emulate their divinity by claiming it as your own.”
— Alan Cohen

130. “Throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart—live for it, die for it, and you will find the happiness that you had thought could never be yours.”
— Dale Carnegie

131. “For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger

132. “Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.”
— E. Joseph Cossman

133. “You either run with lions or walk with sheep.”
— Matshona Dhliwayo

134. “But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
— Carl Sagan

135. “You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end. A messy or incomplete conclusion can reverberate for years to come.”
— Robert Greene

136. “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
— Eric Hoffer

137. “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.”
— Leroy Eimes

138. “To me, leadership is about encouraging people. It’s about stimulating them. It’s about enabling them to achieve what they can achieve – and to do that with a purpose.”
— Christine Lagarde

139. “Never look back’ is my philosophy.”
— Helen Clark

140. “We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.”
— J.K. Rowling

141. “To achieve something meaningful, you need to know where you are heading and be willing to train hard to get there.”
— Arianna Huffington

142. “Greatness is consistency driven by a deep love of the work.”
— Maria Popova

143. “No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.”
— Pope Francis

144. “It doesn’t matter how great your original product or idea is, if you can’t build a great company, then your product will not endure.”
— Brian Chesky

145. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
— Elon Musk

146. “The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. When the leader demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together, the team wins.”
— Howard Schultz

147. “Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”
— Peter Diamandis

148. “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

149. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”
— Buddha

150. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
— Oprah Winfrey